


I don't want to forget

by Greenteacandle



Category: All For The Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Gen, M/M, Neil grew up with Riko, One-Sided Attraction, POV Andrew Minyard, Suicide, Unhappy Ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 03:00:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,029
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25287214
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Greenteacandle/pseuds/Greenteacandle
Summary: Andrew is a successful exy star now, but he still remembers his first love.
Relationships: Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard
Comments: 6
Kudos: 35





	I don't want to forget

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is kind of based on the book The Little Prince and it's not a happy one, just to give you a warning. I first wrote this for another ship years ago but decided to remodel it now. I’m sorry. 
> 
> This is not graphic in any way, but please take note of the tags.

I have been in love once. At least I thought it was love. I was 19 at the time and I'm sure many people who knew me would argue that I was incapable of such emotions. But I believe, still to this day, after ten years, that it was love. It had to be.

I was on some court-issued medication at the time. It was supposed to make me less violent I think, or happy maybe, less depressed. I didn’t think I was depressed, and I think what I did to be put on the meds was totally justified. I don’t like people knowing my business and the meds did make me more unpredictable so I guess I understand where people would get the idea that I wasn’t great with feelings. I kept telling everyone I hated the boy I loved.

See, I did some time in a juvenile detention center for violent behaviour. I was just protecting my brother and cousin, but apparently someone thought I went overboard. I learned exy in prison and after successfully playing it during college I became Andrew Minyard, star goalkeeper. Even though my past is public knowledge now, most people wouldn’t believe it.

I ended up in this profession kind of accidentally. I joined the Palmetto State Foxes when they offered me, my brother and our cousin college degrees if we all played for the team. It was the best offer I could get, and I took it. Unfortunately, or fortunately, depending on how you look at it, I was very very good at the game. I was the best goalkeeper in all of college level exy and after graduating I found myself agreeing to play professionally. I had never considered a career in sports, but it was the easiest most obvious decision at the time. My career has been rather satisfactory, but truthfully, I've only started enjoying it recently.

It could be that the last years of my time with the Foxes were shadowed by the loss of the boy I loved, and it carried on to the first years of my professional career.

When I met him a few days after I started my second year at Palmetto, he saved me from drowning in my dark thoughts about all the shit in my life that the meds couldn’t suppress. He was the reason I started to feel actually interested in the sport that gave me the opportunity for a future.

I wasn't all that happy about my new position as an athlete. I was going for a degree in criminal justice and being on the exy team required me to move to a dorm with a lot of other kids. I've always been a rather private person too and I wasn't used to the kind of ruckus some of the other people were creating.

I stayed in my room a lot and hardly interacted with the other boys and girls and concentrated on my schoolwork. I was likely the most talented person on the team, and I ended up doing the bare minimum. My disinterest in the sport and the anti-psychotics made me not care much about what happened on the court and made my teammates annoyed. I liked annoying my teammates more than I enjoyed playing. Being great allowed me to slack off.

That dorm was where I met him. I was minding my own business as usual when he suddenly appeared seemingly out of nowhere.

” Please draw me a tiger” he said. That was the first thing he said to me. Now, I wasn't much of an artist back then and I must admit my drawing skills are still not that excellent. My friend Renee is a lot better.

” I can't really draw,” I said to him.

” That doesn't matter, draw me a tiger,” he said again. It was becoming clear very soon that this boy was damn stubborn, and it wouldn't be easy to get rid of him. I had more important things to do than listening to his demands, so I took a piece of paper and quickly sketched him a tiger.

He seemed rather sceptical of my drawing at first but after some serious inspection he apparently deemed it fitting for whatever purpose he wanted it for. As he had his tiger, I thought he would now leave me alone. As you can see, this was not love at first sight. I don't believe in things like that.

Of course, I was wrong in thinking he would be satisfied with just one tiger. After a moment of careful consideration, or that's what it looked like to me, he drew my attention to himself again.

” Please draw me a girl,” he said. I looked at him, thoroughly confused.

” Why do you want me to draw a girl?” I asked. My confusion must have been evident on my face as he huffed and looked at me like I was the silliest person on earth.

” I need someone to take care of the tiger while I'm busy,” he answered. This was so logical in all its ridiculousness that I took another paper and tried my best to draw him a girl capable of taking care of a tiger. I gave my drawing to him and again he took his time looking at it.

” She’s pretty ugly,” he said after a moment” but I guess she'll be ok. At least my friend won't get jealous.” I was puzzled I must say. He was a very strange, annoying, boy and I didn't even know him at all yet.

” Why is she in a frame?” he asked suddenly, interrupting my musings.

” Uh well, it's a magical frame, it's like her home. Like in Harry Potter books. You wouldn't want her to be homeless right?” I tried. He looked at me weirdly for a moment and I was sure he would demand a better explanation, the paintings in those books didn't even really work like that, but to my surprise he seemed to finally accept it and smiled brightly.

” Thank you,” he said and was gone almost as suddenly as he had appeared.

That was my first meeting with Neil. And that last smile, I think, was the moment that made me start falling for him.

Of course, I didn't learn his name on that first meeting, nor the second one either. It actually took until our first actual practice of the year before I found out. I had dubbed him as the weird boy who asks a lot of questions in my mind. After that first meeting, he made it a habit to appear in my room at odd times almost every day and ask all kinds of questions. He never let go of any of them before he had gotten an answer. His behaviour was often almost childish, and I wondered why he acted like that when he wasn’t that much younger than me. At one point I started suspecting that he was making fun of me.

The thing about Neil was that he was kind of a mystery. He never really answered any questions. Many times, I knew he was outright lying. Everything I learned about him I found out through his ramblings as side notes and just working things out on my own. It took me over a week to learn he lived in the dorm and was on the exy team and even longer to hear he actually had some friends in the school and the team. Or just one friend and a bunch of people he spent time with occasionally. Neil talked a lot and sometimes I didn't even know if he was joking or making things up. Most people thought he was weird and some even saw him as too weird to associate with. Everyone agreed that he was one of the most beautiful boys they had ever seen.

And he really was. He wasn't traditionally handsome; more like a model type beautiful. He was only a little taller than me and had a slender build with amazing thighs. He had curly auburn hair that was a bit too long for a guy and cut in layers. His eyes were an icy blue and his smile was stunning but could turn dangerously sharp if he felt threatened.

Anyway, after a couple of weeks of answering his endless questions the best I could, I got to hear more about him. He came to my room in the evening and sat on my bed. I was mentally preparing to answer another flood of questions but instead he just sat there quietly for a long moment. Finally, he started talking.

”Do you know how lonely it feels when you miss someone you haven't seen for a long time?” he said, and even though it was in the form of a question, I got a feeling he wasn't expecting an answer this time so I stayed quiet.

” My home is very big but there's only one other person there. Riko is my best friend. I really miss him,” he continued. This confused me because by this point, I had gathered Neil was in fact Nathaniel Wesninski and I had heard about his connection to Riko Moriyama. But I thought they lived with Riko’s uncle. I had had really bad luck with getting any answers from him before, but I decided to try my luck and ask anyway.

” No,” was his very short answer, but that was more than nothing, right? I never got to know if he was lying or if there was some other arrangement no one knew about.

Sometime after this I finally got to know more. I first heard it from the others in the team. They said Neil thought he came from another planet. This was obviously not true. I didn't believe it back then and neither did anyone else, but I have lived the past ten years wanting to believe him. This revelation brought me back to the question about his living arrangement and the best friend. One night I finally got to hear his story.

*

” Do you think you could keep a tiger as a pet like you can a cat?” Neil asked me.

” I don't think so. Why would you want a pet tiger?” I asked him. I had gotten used to his questions and they hardly ever surprised me anymore.” If you wanted to keep it as a pet, why didn't you ask for a cat?” I continued. I knew he would have a reason. He always did.

” A tiger looks prettier and is more exotic. I wanted to give Riko something to entertain him and he is very picky about things like this,” he told me. It turned out Neil hadn't had many friends as a child. Riko was the first and only person he considered a friend. Apparently, he had been brought to Riko one day out of nowhere. Neil didn't know why he had been left with the boy, but he had instantly grown attached to the passionate boy with a great talent in exy. Neil told me how Riko had taught him to play too and made their home feel less empty. And Neil had loved him for that, but Riko also had a bit of a diva in him. He wanted to be recognized and praised for his talent and he got mad when Neil didn't have time to entertain him. He also wanted to be the best and didn’t tolerate anyone being better than him in absolutely anything.

This also brought us to the issue of why Neil left his home. Riko's demanding nature had finally started to make Neil uncomfortable and sad. He loved his friend dearly but didn't know what to do with him. He couldn’t tell Riko to leave so he had left instead.

” I shouldn't have left him like that. I ran away and it made me even more sad,” he said to me.” I didn't understand him, and I should have talked to him so he would have understood me better too.”

I doubted Riko would have understood. From what I had heard, Riko sounded like the kind of manipulative person who would apologize for his bad behaviour only to get Neil to stay and then continue as he had before. No matter what, Neil had had enough, and he never backed down from a decision he had already made. I was glad. I was becoming increasingly worried about his mental state.

Over the next couple of days Neil told me about all the people he had met after he left his home. First there had been someone Neil called the Douchebag. Neil had found him to be extremely disagreeable as he had thought he was simply better than anyone else. One shouldn’t really look down on everyone else if they don’t want to be seen as an asshole. When Neil told me about their conversation, I thought the guy sounded somewhat conceited but not necessarily a bad person. People tend to be more complicated than they let you see, I would know. All this made me a bit uncomfortable in the next second when it came apparent that this person was actually my brother Aaron. Our relationship was a bit complicated, we didn’t get along, but we still cared for each other. However, I totally agreed with Neil.

Since joining the team Neil had met all of the others one by one. He told me about his meeting with my cousin Nicky who thought himself to be very pretty and was quite vain, according to Neil. I couldn't help laughing, internally of course, because I knew Neil had to be colouring the truth again. The way Neil told it, Nicky had told Neil to admire and compliment him and had then proceeded to bow very theatrically. I knew Nicky could be a little much, but I couldn’t imagine him being quite as over the top as Neil described.

There was a person in our team who was even more angsty than I was in my first days there. Neil had caught Kevin one night, drinking in his room. Drinking wasn't really allowed, especially when we were mostly underaged, but some of us still did it when there was no one around to stop us. Kevin though, drank when he was sad. And he was always sad. If he wasn't, he came up with some reason to be sad so he would have a reason to drink. Neil had felt sorry for him and he told me he sometimes went to Kevin's room to try to cheer him up. Honestly, I think Kevin was just stressed, he is still super competitive and hates losing, and back then all we did was lose.

I could recognize the others from Neil’s stories too. The way he described Dan endlessly working and doing her best even when she was tired. The way he told me about Allison's will to explore her options outside of what her family wanted. And his jokes about Matt's silliness made me smile. It had been Matt who had encouraged Neil to get to know the team better and make some friends.

While trying to get to know the team and find the people who could be his friends, Neil had met Seth. I didn't know him well back then, I still don’t, I don’t want to. While quite charming in his own way, he could also be very mean and cunning. They had talked for a while and I believe Seth learned more about Neil in that one conversation than I had learned in over a week when I first met Neil. It made me a bit jealous and when Neil said Seth had promised to help him if he ever wanted to go back home, I decided I wanted to keep the two as far away from each other as possible. Of course, I couldn't really do that, but damn I really wanted to.

Neil had thought Riko was the best player in the whole galaxy and it came as a bit of a shock to him when many of the people in our team were also very good and some even incredible. I mean, Kevin and I are great, and the others were good enough, I guess. It made him very sad thinking that Riko wasn't as special as he had made Neil think he was and for a while he felt lost. I was starting to really hate Riko. That's when Neil had met Renee. Yes, this was the same artistically talented Renee that was my only friend outside family.

Neil had been sitting in some corner when Renee had found him and went to say hello. Renee had gone through some shit in her life too and she didn't trust people easily. Still she was very likeable, and she could be very wise when she wanted to be. I later heard from her the whole story of how they became friends, but I don't think that's really important for me to tell here. Renee had made Neil see how Riko was still special because he was Neil's friend. They had talked a lot about exy practice and the challenges they met daily. Renee had been the first person Neil had told that he came from another planet. Renee had pretended to believe him. She said she didn’t see any harm in that at the time. That's another thing about Renee. She doesn't trust people, but when she becomes friends with someone, when you win her trust, she is very loyal, and she will never make fun of you. I know some others made snide remarks about Neil’s belief and while no one took his claim seriously, I had been worrying Neil actually might. I should have listened to my instinct, but I didn’t want to show how worried I was.

Neil had been very happy to have a friend like Renee, but he had started to miss Riko. He had started to wander around the dorm and that's how he had eventually ended up in my room. He said he felt like I could understand him because I missed my home too. And though I had never had a real place I could call home, or maybe because of that, I think maybe I did miss the concept of one in a way.

*

One night we had talked for a long time and it was getting very late. I hadn't even gone to dinner and was getting hungry. I told Neil I would go get something to eat and could walk him to his room, but he said he was too tired. I hesitated for a moment. I had truly fallen in love with him and it might be a bad idea to let him sleep in my room, but I didn't have much of a choice. I couldn’t carry him and if he had decided to stay it would have been hopeless to try to get him to leave. He never backed down from what he had decided.

When I came back to my room that night, he had fallen asleep on my bed. I admit I felt a bit like a creep watching him sleep, but he truly was beautiful in the moonlight shining through the window. I slept on the floor that night.

The days I got to spent with Neil were the happiest of my life. I left my room to explore with him after our practice and school hours. We talked about things that made no sense and things that made almost too much sense. I loved it when he laughed. He asked me to draw things for him and I did my best even though my weak tries usually made him laugh even more. I didn't mind. I was glad he was happy.

*

But he wasn't happy enough to stay. One night when my lectures had run late, I went to look for him and found him sitting on a couch in the cafeteria. I couldn't see very well, but it sounded like he was talking to someone.

” Are you sure this is going to work?” he was saying. When I got closer, I could see another person sitting in an armchair opposite to him. My blood ran cold when I noticed it was Seth. To me this meant bad news. Something was going to happen, and I wasn't going to like it. I had never seen the two of them talking. I didn’t like Seth and we didn’t interact much even at practice. I had looked into him a little once when I had been feeling very jealous and worried that Neil would actually leave.

When I walked over to them Seth stood up and bowed his head a little before he left. I looked at Neil.

” What are you doing?” I asked. Nervous and scared of his answer I sat beside him. Not too close, but close enough to feel him still there.

” It’s quite sad to be away from someone you care about for a long time,” he said. That didn't really answer my question.” Do you think Riko cried when I left him? I've learned that leaving someone can make the person cry if they've grown attached to the person who has to leave.” Now I was getting very scared. This didn't sound good at all.

” What are you planning?” I asked. My voice was shaking.

” I think I've been away from home for too long. I need to go back,” he said, and this was more of an answer than I needed. This was the answer I had been afraid of. He was leaving.

” What about me? Won't you miss me?” I tried to reason with him that night on the couch even though I knew it would be futile. He wouldn't change his mind. He never did.

Finally, I ended up just holding him in my arms. I’m not a hugger, but I couldn’t help it. I told him I loved him and stole a kiss from his lips. He kept smiling and telling me how I would look at the stars in the future and think about him living on one of them. How I would hear his laugh when I looked at those stars and how he would remember me too. I didn’t understand what he meant by that, yet. I didn't notice the little vial in his hand and didn't see him bring it to his lips and swallow the contents. I did notice his breathing slowing and his body losing its strength. I looked at him in panic. I didn't understand what was happening, what he had done, why he had done it. He said he was going home so why didn't he go buy a train ticket?

” My home is very far away. I can't bring this body with me, it's too heavy,” he whispered. I felt my eyes getting wet and then tears tickled my cheeks. He lifted his hand to brush them away.

” This is goodbye,” he whispered.” I hope you can find someone you feel responsible for like I am responsible for Riko. I made him my friend and then left him. Now I have to go back.” I watched him close his eyes and his breathing stop. I hugged him and buried my face into his auburn hair and cried.

*

It has been so many years. So much has happened since then. I have made some new friends in my professional teams and lived a very busy life, but I haven't forgotten about Neil. I have started to believe that he came from another planet and is now living happily with his friend because I don't want to consider the other option. I want to believe I must have been mistaken and Neil’s Riko was a different person than the Riko Moriyama I know. When I look at the stars whenever I'm in a place where I can see them, I hear his laugh just like he told me I would, and I smile. I smile because he would want me to.

-End


End file.
